The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it may be described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present technology.
Prior to entering a paint booth area, vehicle assemblies may be covered in metal dust, filings, stamping oils, and other debris from various welding processes. In certain instances a vehicle assembly, sometimes referred to as a body-in-white, includes various sheet metal components of the vehicle that have been welded together. The body-in-white can be subjected to various operations and processes associated with the ultimate vehicle assembly, and various types of foreign material, such as ferrous debris, also known as weldballs, can adhere to the body-in-white as a result of these operations prior to the surface treatment or coating applications. Surface cleaning and preparation processes are important considerations of a vehicular assembly processes. In order to attain an effective and aesthetically pleasing finished vehicle surface that also protects against rust and corrosion, an underlying substrate should be effectively free of foreign material including, but not limited to, foreign dust particles, dirt particles, weldballs, lint, oils and the like during various phases of surface treatment and coating processes. To achieve a suitable, durable substrate surface to which various paints and finishes can adhere, great care is taken such that paint booths and spray-coating booths are clean and dust free. However, if the substrate entering the paint booth is not clean or dust free, there remains a high risk of contamination during the surface treatment or coating process.
Various degreaser cleaning processes have been proposed and attempted. However, certain attempts have been met with varying degrees of limited success, either in the effectiveness in the removal of foreign material and/or in the risk of recontamination of the body-in-white or substrate during degreasing and cleaning operations. Accordingly, there remains a need for an improved way of preventing ferrous debris that may have accumulated in a degreaser bath from reattaching to a body-in-white and becoming a defect in the coating finish.